LTE IPR Agreement: What About All the Others?

Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), Ericsson (ERIC), NEC (NIPNY), NextWave Wireless (WAVE), Nokia (NOK), Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson (SNE) have collectively agreed to a framework which aims to limit LTE (Long Term Evolution) patent royalties to single-digit % of handset sales value.

OK, that's clearly a worthy goal.... but it does rather beg the question of what % of the total necessary IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) they own between them. I'd guess it's a fairly good chunk, but there are a few obvious missing representatives, notably all the chipset & RF component suppliers like Qualcomm (QCOM), TI (TXN), Intel (INTC), Broadcom (BRCM) and so forth. Then there's the various IPR licencing specialists like Interdigital (IDCC), plus presumably various of the operators have invented some of the clever stuff in their own labs. Also missing from the roster are Motorola (MOT), Nortel (NT), Huawei and most of the other Asian vendors.

This is, however, definitely a good ploy in term of getting the Next Gen Mobile Network Alliance [NGMN] to further favour LTE over alternative candidate technologies. It will be interesting to see if the WiMAX community does something similar.... and if the WiMAX and LTE groups (which overlap quite a lot) can find it in their hearts to cross-licence things where necessary. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.

Comments

[wirelessGeek]

Actually, for LTE chip-makers will deal with different kind of model. Most of the upcoming wireless technology will be implemented as firmware (programmable software) on a generic hardware. It is true that Interdigital, Qulacomm, Motorola and Nortel may have essential IPR but their contribution is part of a much bigger pie shared by several companies. So, each has less influence unlike 3G-CDMA case where one company had the dominance.